iv'e put all your poems here until i find a home on exercise 1 blog on my website, if anyone interested in exercise please email me at
apf1961@live.co.uk
SusanFarrell
CUTTINGS
‘I’m in here darlin-’’ the carer said
taking books from the fridge,
moving black plastic bags,
sagged with eighty four years,
weaving a well worn path
through stacks of Good
Housekeeping magazines,
walls of empty jam jars, washed
margarine tubs heaped
neat in readiness for cuttings
from plants that remember the famine.
‘-you can get through here now darlin’
to your bedroom and the bathroom.’
Miss Sally Maguire, zimmer-framed
shopping trolley manoeuvring,
smiles, and thinks of driving,
because she’ll be back at work
next week -she imagines proudly.
She’ll get rid of those-
‘carers’ who call her darlin’’
who wreck her bag organised,
placed, catalogued, filed, fond
memories, and cuttings:
at least two epics and a new century.
She’ll be back at work guiding
the present round the past.
adrian fox.org
MONKEY POLE......... (the evolution of recovery)
The sun throws
a shimmering
shadow on my wall.
A shadow within a shadow,
an image within a image
like a heat hazed mayhem.
I ponder a book
on the graphic works of
M.C. ESCHER a man way
ahead of his time, his drawings
of rippled water are like
the splash of shadowed summer
on my wall. The evolution
of his surrealism must have been like
the diagrams of Darwins mind,
you have to go down to come up.
Birds become fish and fish become sky
spanning acres of land.
Life is there in that shadow,
Dancing leaves upon my wall.
My carer put me to bed at 9pm and left
me to play with my monkey pole.
My home is like a hospital
there is a wet room and
and a wheelchair and rails for me
to pull up from but not
pull down.
this is a new poem and like the cafe can i ask you all to folllow the blog and tell me you are intersted if i set an exercise. i need your support.
this is a new poem and like the cafe can i ask you all to folllow the blog and tell me you are intersted if i set an exercise. i need your support.
EMMA MC D
The Wonder of nature
We lock ourselves away inside buildings
Not wanting to hear the blackbird sing.
We take comfort in the sounds
Of car alarms, music, shouting and banging.
We keep our minds distracted
Not wanting to hear the cricket call.
We cover the grass with concrete
Trees and hedges make way for brick walls.
She watches as natural resources disappear
And from her eye falls a single tear.
SUNSETS
The pale sun rises,
weak watery anguish
happiness intermingles
mixed with colours that blend.
Confuse and blind . The twist
of life remains bound Dappled
with blue, flanked by green ...
and haunted by brown.
Forgotten times remembered
in photographs, faces from
the past blur into the present
Switching from black to blue
and back to grey, the sunsets
on another day
THE ORCHARD no2( song/poem)
In little bars & small cafe's I sit
to sort out what is real & what isn’t
Two hours to give it all & hit that high
Two hours to give it all & hit that high
& 22 that’s left to occupy.
I do remember you, you touched my soul.
I do remember you, you touched my soul.
To fill me with a love to make me whole.
Love’s the only gift what will remain
Love’s the only gift what will remain
endeavours of the mind are all in vain.
It’s a long, long way from here to yonder
whatever makes it so I often wonder.
I recall an orchard in another time
I recall an orchard in another time
the world was young & everything was fine.
I struggle to return to that orchard
& I wonder was it ever there at all
Returning like a child to the orchard
to celebrate a time before the fall……
In moving trains I go within a world
In moving trains I go within a world
that does’nt even know.
Life is a process not just some event,
Life is a process not just some event,
the planet is’nt ours it’s only lent.
These days I’m sold on hanging onto now
These days I’m sold on hanging onto now
and questions need less answers when you bow
Sometime I do ask, why and thats a truth
Sometime I do ask, why and thats a truth
and long for the orchards of lost
youth.
youth.
The Prince (Poem)
For Will Oldham
I saw you in the gravel
Grinding dust
Your sweat a testimony
To a beauty made of rust
You lost yourself and lost me
As your demons danced
A broken melody.
With each word you meant
To turn me back into myself
You were torn from the wilderness
Wild eyed and wicked but tinder
With a heart of glass
And a voice of silver
You left me splintered
and hallow like I had just sold my soul.
and hallow like I had just sold my soul.
Heaven and a star (Song lyrics)
For Mark Linkus (Lead singer of Sparklehorse .)
Down by the river
See the sparkle
See the shine
Lost and found
Lost forever
In the twinkle of an eye
Did you lose your mind?
Looking for a new sky
Did you hope to find a new high?
Up on your rocking horse
You were ambient
You were one of a kind
But now the rivers run it course
Your light is spent
Now you’ve left it all behind
Did you lose your mind
Looking for a new sky
Did you hope to find a new high?
You said you got so sad my friend
Did the sadness get you in the end?
Leave you helpless
Leave you hopeless
When you broke your heart
You broke mine too
You broke mine too
Now there’s a heaven
And a star for you
GLENN WILSON
Precipice
I stand on an outcrop,
the vain labour of barren ideas
vented upon a sculptor’s block.
I cannot chisel for I cannot see
the visage in my mind, the face
of my quarry is yet to reveal itself.
I must chip at the epiphany that sits
on my shoulder, till I can turn around,
catch it in a stare, then soar on the words,
catch the vents rising from the earth
to the heavens. I retrieve a meteor fragment
from close to the sun, palming it carefully
in my hands, till I land and hold it aloft
as a jewel, I climb back up to my precipice
and wait to catch the next zephyr.
JOHN CORVAN
MAGIC
subdued light falls gently
upon your manuscripts,
you sit below the window
with the pages of your story
scattered as you shape
and cut a truth, your truth.
The children are asleep
you sit silent smoking
a roll your own cigarette,
you can almost hear it
the river that runs through
the council estate, the cities
the countries,the pure water.
Outside stationary cars rusting
empty streets, a wind growing
stronger you lift your pen
and begin to write.
MAGIC
subdued light falls gently
upon your manuscripts,
you sit below the window
with the pages of your story
scattered as you shape
and cut a truth, your truth.
The children are asleep
you sit silent smoking
a roll your own cigarette,
you can almost hear it
the river that runs through
the council estate, the cities
the countries,the pure water.
Outside stationary cars rusting
empty streets, a wind growing
stronger you lift your pen
and begin to write.
kevin brady
SECRET STASHES
The life sought is poured through
stages of drunkenness, picture perfect.
The kids dictate, the night ritual
"we're on the duvet" the room is warm
the room is theirs. Prowling the house
for secret stashes.
"why not say what happened"
there is only the hush of sleep
and the breath of the fire
of life ebbing. we find him
on the sofa again the pain
evident his right arm flung
out sweeping away
demons, reality.
tom ffrenchmacho manbravado bowled over by the soft whisper of sweet nothings macho man undone by the steellike softness of love channeled through the inner ear to the startled mind signals to the equally confused shaking body the strong yet vulnerable human machine unhinged by the unexpected virility of the female form weakness overwhelms strength (tom ffrench)/201 |
andrew soye
Reading Michael Longley
To write ‘for Michael Longley’ here
Would seem presumptuous, too inept
A homemade, term-end thank-you card
From an awkward teacher’s pet
But I have seen you striding
In the rows between the desks
Measuring out time and meter
In the lines of rhyming couplets
Quoting classics to a class
Who have long ago stopped their ears
An Argonaut lashed to his own mast
Perseus straightened by the fearsome task
Of pinning down life without killing it
Slaying Medusa while staying alive
With poetry as balanced, delicate
As a bird in flight
Words like polished, shining eyes
adrian fox
SYNDROME
For Howard Wright
I’m reaching in and out beyond
this locked-in-syndrome. Beyond
the hum drum lunch box of tablets
and this overcast sky. Beyond my
books “Splint” and “A kill house.”
I’m here at the river, the source.
I’m just past the point of the blue-
stone road where u have to turn
and turn again.
Hi Stephanie soiled, dead, this poem
means as much to you as the gold lettering
flaking away from the black marble head-
stone. You’ll always be in my poems,
like the fox skulking through the weeds
of your plot "I am just your steppin-
stone. Just your stepping stone".
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